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Asterisk
Asterisk was a three-piece pop/grunge band consisting of Adam Brenner (bass, vocals), Kris Manier (drums, vocals), and Michael Mullins (guitar). 'Formation' During their tenure in the Lids, bassist/vocalist Adam Brenner and drummer Kris Manier occasionally engaged in informal jams with guitarist Michael Mullins under the moniker Tossed Cancer. When Jason Sisk left the Lids for personal reasons, Mullins was brought into the band to replace him. The band continued to play for a time as the Lids, still playing Lids material. However, as the band increasingly replaced the Lids material with newly-written songs, it was decided that the group had acquired an identity sufficiently distinct from the Lids to merit a new name. The name Asterisk was chosen (often graphically represented as *asterisk). 'Live Performances' The band’s first shows—billed as the Lids—were at La Cappuccino in Evansville, Indiana, on March 22, 1996, and at a community benefit show in Muncie, Indiana, the next day. Appearances in preliminary shows for the Teen Track battle of the bands—in which the band advanced to the finals at Union Station but failed to place in the top three—soon followed. Over the next year two years, Asterisk performed frequently in Indianapolis and the surrounding Midwest. The group was a regular at Smedley's Dream in Indianapolis and A-1 Records in Muncie, and played shows as far afield as St. Louis, Cincinnati, and Chicago. The band built its strongest following in Evansville via its ties with the National Biscuit Company, performing a number of times at the now-defunct Sankofa Theater (owned by the proprietors of local record label Higher Step, to which the National Biscuit Company had signed) and other Evansville venues; Brenner’s writings were published in a local ‘zine as sociated with Higher Step, and in a poll by the same publication, Mullins was voted the second best guitarist in the Evansville music scene (behind only the guitarist of local Evansville favorites Olive Lucy). The band's last show was at Rhino's in Bloomington on May 30, 1998. 'Line-Up Changes' In early 1997, Kris Manier left Asterisk. National Biscuit Company drummer Brian Fuzzell temporarily filled the drum stool for the band, splitting his time between the two bands. In an attempt to secure a full-time replacement, the band recruited former Mergins drummer Matt Speck. Speck, however, proved chronically unreliable, and throughout his tenure, the band was routinely forced to fall back on the services of Fuzzell in order to perform. Manier rejoined the group later in 1997. 'Recording History' Asterisk’s first formal recording was conducted in early 1996 in the band’s practice space in the basement of the Manier family home, and consisted of a four-track recording of the songs “Reinstate” and “Goremet” that was intended for release as a cassette single, with “Reinstate” as the A-side. The “Reinstate” single was never released, in part because it was superseded by the “Shake Gently Before Enjoying” E.P., which the band recorded in the summer of 1996 for inclusion on the Homeskillet Music Presents sampler (a project that had begun life as a prospective split L.P. with one side featuring Asterisk and the other the National Biscuit Company). Recording of the E.P. took place at Digital Productions, and was engineered by Dave Truex and mixed by Paul Hess. Eight tracks were recorded, six of which were included on the sampler. On April 12, 1997, Brenner and Mullins appeared on University of Indianapolis radio station WICR's "Live From Studio B". The broadcast, consisting of the duo performing acoustic renditions of Asterisk songs in between interview segments, was preserved on tape. At the time of Asterisk’s dissolution, the band was preparing to record its first full-length album. After seriously considering investing in two days of recording time at Steve Albini’s Chicago-area recording facility, the band prospectively decided to record at a local studio with long-time Indianapolis musician Ben Adrian producing. The last known draft of the track listing showed the proposed running order of the album as: #Later Than Now #In Half #Ouch Extract #Too Long #Reinstate #How It Is #Come About #Fun For Luck #All Along #Think You're the Lucky One #Compact #Oh, My Dear In May 2000, the band played a one-off reunion show at a going-away party prior to Mullins’s move to Nashville, Tennessee. The show was recorded on digital multi-track by Phillip Wittlief, and provides the most professional—and in the case of some songs, the only—recordings available of some of Asterisk’s core material. In 2002, Mullins compiled all existing audio recordings of the band (minus an early soundboard tape from one of the Teen Track battle of bands shows, which is currently missing) onto three CDs: "Tale of the Tapes (Archives Vol. 1 & 2)" (consisting of the WICR radio show and a rough recording of the majority of the band's songs that was taped live in the band's practice space to document the songs for copyright purposes) and "Tones on Tape (Archives Vol. 3)" (consisting of the 2000 reunion show, the "Reinstate" single, and the two Homeskillet Music Presents out-takes). 'Dissolution' Personal tensions within the band led to Mullins’s dismissal from the group in the summer of 1998. Brenner and Manier soon resumed playing with Jason Sisk under the name Mr. DNA. See Also *Asterisk Songography — A Complete List of Asterisk's Songs